Nitty Gritty Laura Kuenssberg!

stockhausen

stockhausen

stockhausen

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The BBC has rejected a complaint against Laura Kuenssberg for using the phrase “nitty-gritty”, which anti-racism campaigners claim originates from the slave trade.

She used the term while speaking about the departure of top Downing Street press chief Lee Cain.

This sparked a complaint frm a listener, which was initially dismissed by programme makers and then escalated to the corporation's executive complaints unit, which has now found in Ms Kuenssberg's favour.

The term “nitty-gritty” was reportedly banned by Sky Sports last year over the concerns about its origins - which are disputed by some linguistics experts. (LINK)
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Now personally I cannot stand Ms Kuenssberg but what paranoid lunatic came up with this bizarre etymological theory
 
so whats this theory then? is it a case of they're claiming it's specifically a derogatory phrase developed as part of the slave trade or are they merely associating something that happened to develop in roughly the same timeframe?

certainly in its modern usage it's not a term i've ever been given cause to associate negatively and if i'd hazard a guess i'd probably have suggested its origins were something to do with gold panning?
 
Hades said:
Careful... minefields were used by the British Empire. Not sure we should be using that term now as it glorifies our past activities.
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Our “past activities” included slavery, guess we shouldn’t use the phrase “past activities”.

Bloody modern culture and it’s inability to let anything by the wayside. It’s pathetic.
 
Nitty Gritty was included on a list of phrases to be avoided by sports commentators at a diversity briefing attended by hundreds of BBC, Sky, BT Sport and ITV staff last summer. They were told to use alternatives such as “the basic facts” on the grounds that nitty-gritty is thought to have referred to the detritus found in the bottom of transatlantic slave ships.

Searching online for a definition seems by and large to come up with something along the lines of "The basic facts of a matter, situation, etc; the core."

So far as I can understand it, there was only one complainant :rolleyes:

ps - I like the link to the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band - although I wasn't overly impressed with their rendition of Mr.Bojangles - Nina Simone did it better ;)
 
This nonsense is back again?

There's absolutely no genuine evidence that "Nitty Gritty" has any relation to slavery other than what the perpetually offended have claimed.
 
How ridiculous - Can’t say anything these days without offending someone!

Diddums said:
The real question here is why are you posting this crap that nobody give a toss about?

Also, yay or nay?

I'm on the fence. Probably goes like the clappers.
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I fell a little bit in love with her when Brexit was just starting off :p
 
I'm reporting all of you for using words, which can be used in sentences that somebody finds offensive.

I'm also reporting myself for making this post for the same reason.
 
Gray2233 said:
This nonsense is back again?

There's absolutely no genuine evidence that "Nitty Gritty" has any relation to slavery other than what the perpetually offended have claimed.
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Agreed. From this:
"There is no evidence to support the suggestion that 'nitty-gritty' has any connection with slave ships. It probably originated in the USA as an African-American expression, but that's as near as it gets to slavery. It isn't recorded in print until the 1930s, long after slave ships had disappeared, and none of the early references make any link to slavery."

Absolutely madness. IMHO of course......
 
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Obviously white sumpremacist coded language.

Take the first two letters from both words and squint a bit, it's obvbiously racist.
 
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